Diabetes Mellitus

SweetI don't have diabetes, but I know many that suffer from this debilitating condition. Diabetes is a sugar disease. Diabetes in common usage normally refers to Diabetes Mellitus, which comes from the Greek roughly translated as "to pass sweet urine." Diabetes = "to pass though" Millitus = "honey, sweet." Essentially it means sugar passed in your urine.

Diabetes results from the body's inability to produce enough insulin to lower blood sugar levels. When sugar enters the blood stream, it has to go somewhere. Insulin is the hormone responsible for pushing insulin into muscle and into fat cells. If no insulin is available, the sugar passes out the body when ya urinate.

The two common types of diabetes, are:

Type 1: Caused by a defective pancreas. The pancreas cannot create enough insulin to regulate blood sugar. The present solution is to inject insulin or use an insulin pump. Type 1 normally starts in childhood.

Type 2: Caused by a failing pancreas or insulin resistance. Type 2 Diabetes was formally known as adult-onset. It used to affect the elderly or aged. Many adults suffered from Type 2 Diabetes in later life. The normal age range for adult-onset Diabetes was 40 to 60. Type 2 Diabetes is normally controlled by medication. Type 2 Diabetes has recently been diagnosed in children. This was totally unknown in the past.

I don't suffer from diabetes. By all accounts I should. My father was type-2 diabetic. My mother is type-2 diabetic. I'm NOT diabetic and I will never suffer from that disease. How do I know this? Easy.

Diabetes is a sugar disease. The more sugar ingested, the harder the pancreas works to produce insulin. Insulin regulates blood sugar. I use the term sugar rather loosely. More accurately, its blood sugar or glucose.

Any foods you eat that elevate blood-sugar will place a strain on your pancreas. The simplest solution is to eat foods that do NOT elevate blood sugar levels.

Which foods elevate blood sugar?

Think carbohydrates. Think starch. Think sugar.

Carbohydrates are the main culprit. All forms of carbohydrates are converted into glucose in the blood stream. Forget all the nonsense about good carbs, bad carbs. Whole grains vs refined grains. All carbohydrates experience the same fate. They all, without fail, convert to glucose in the blood stream. It does not matter if they are monosaccharides, disacchariedes, oligosaccharides, polysaccarides. Sooner or later they all become glucose in the blood.

Elevated levels of glucose in the blood stream signal an immediate response from the pancreas by pumping copious amounts of insulin to reduce glucose blood levels. The more carbs, sugar or starch you eat, the harder the pancreas works against the tsunami of glucose in your blood.

In a one-off situation the body can deal with it. But day-after-day, year-after-year, the over worked pancreas cannot cope with the flood of sugar entering the body. Eventually, it results in pancreatic insulin failure. It gives up the ghost and cannot cope with the high levels of glucose.

The human body holds around 8 pints of blood. How much sugar do you reckon your 8 pints of blood take at any time before it becomes toxic? Guess.4.5ml. About a teaspoonful. That's all. If glucose (blood sugar) rises above that, the pancreas goes into turbo mode to flood the insulin and reduce glucose levels back to a save level. Too much sugar in the blood is toxic.How many teaspoons of sugar in a 12oz/350ml can of regular coca cola?Answer: 9.5

Another problem that high blood glucose creates is insulin resistance. This is a big one.

See, if you're exercising heavily everyday, doing 10k or 20k runs, you can easily burn off all that sugar your consuming. Things get sticky when ya don't burn off all that sugar your dumping into your blood stream. The sugar (glucose) has to go somewhere. It can't just magically evaporate.

Insulin is a potent hormone that has two primary functions.

1.) Lowers blood sugar

2.) Pushes fat into fat cells

Can ya see the link? All that sugar sitting in your blood-stream is converted into fat and stored in fat cells. All that sugar has to go somewhere, and it lands up round your gut and your backside. Can ya see how insulin works? It achieves number 1 by actuating number 2. So all that blood sugar, if it does not get used, is converted into fat and stored in fat cells. How cool is that?

If your not exercising and all that sugar is flooding into your system, insulin must drive the glucose (blood sugar) into cells, even if they don't want it. Week after week, month after month, they cells can't uptake the sugar any more. They don't want stuff they cant use and start to fight back. This is known as insulin resistance and is the first stage of Type-2 Diabetes.Continue along this path to your wonderful destination.

Go Low-Fat and Get Diabetes

There's a mass marketing campaign for healthy eating. Low-fat this and low-fat that, every food manufacturer has jumped on the band wagon. If you lower fat in your food stuff, you also lower calories. The manufacturers have to boost calories. Reducing fat they have no option but to increase carbs/sugar.

Low fat = High Carb/HighSugar

Its simple really once you understand it.

So what does the wonderful low-fat high-sugar future hold for ya? Diabetes anyone? The more sugar ya dump into your system, the more insulin your body creates to manage it.

Why is that a problem? Err cos for 4 million years of evolution we ate almost zero carbs, starches or sugars.

Steve Redgrave was an Olympic Gold Medalist. He won gold medals at two olympics. He's one of the few you would consider to suffer from diabetes. Redgrave was recently diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.

If an ultra-fit gold medal winning athlete can get Type-2 Diabetes, there must be something wrong with human beings. We must be doing something wrong to create this condition

I was having my car serviced one time, waiting for the mechanics to locate broken parts and replace them. Standing around or sitting in the waiting area I got talking to another customer having his vehicle fixed. We chatted about various things, football, weather, and so on. Nothing serious. We somehow got onto the topic of diabetes and this guy told me of his wife's recent death.

She suffered from Type-2 Diabetes for many years, and drugs failed to cure the condition. At best all could be hoped for, was to keep the condition at bay. Her diabetes became progressively worse, resulting in amputation of toes, then foot. She died a short time after.

I can still recall what he said and the quotes he used to describe it:

"Its the sugar. The sugar is a poison. It clogs the arteries and blocks circulation. Its like when you put sugar in your tea, but don't stir it. The sugar sits at the bottom like a syrup, like a gel"

"When the blood can't circulate any more, gangrene sets in and surgeons have to cut off the affected part to stop the spread of gangrene."

What's so bad about sugar? Plenty. Let me explain.

Diabetes is a disease of civilization. When the white man exports his culture and life-style, diabetes follows. (along with cancer and heart disease). Diabetes is unknown among indigenous or aboriginal tribes living along traditional lines.

When tribe members move to the cities, eat city foods, adopt city life they develop health problems, the white man's disease. The diseases of civilization.

The San tribe living in Botswana. Are hunter-gatherers living as they did thousands of years ago. Civilization has not touched them. Diabetes is unknown. Cancer is unknown. They hunt game and search for roots and berries. Their diets are rich in meat and animal fats, supplemented with small amounts of roots and berries, when they can be found, or when the season produces them.

The San Tribe of Nomibia, are a nomadic tribe of hunter gatherers, living in South West Africa. They're staple is meat and animal fat. The San Tribe hunt, kill and eat their prey. The San diet is typical of indigenous people.

The Masai Mara Tribe in Kenya live on a high fat diet of milk, cows blood and meat. They have no diabetes, no incidence of heart disease or cancer. How come? They eat no sugar, low amounts of carbs and

The Inuit Indians living in the nothern reaches of Canada, and those still living along traditional indigenous lines, do not suffer from diabetes or cancer. The Inuit live on a diet of seal meat and blubber, whale meat and blubber, fish, very small amounts of vegetables when the frozen tundra recedes for a few months in Summer.

A western explorer at the beginning of the last century went to live among the Inuit. His name was Vilhjalmur Stefansson. He spent a year living with the Inuit. He noted that 90% of their diet was meat and fish. Almost a zero-carbohydrate diet. Researchers found it hard to believe, so Stefansson agreed to eat no foods but meat for a year. Again, that's zero-carbs. At the end of one year, he was found to be perfectly healthy.

How many carbohydrates does the body need to survive? How many carbs are essential for existence?

Answer: Zero.

Here's an excerpt from Lyle McDonalds Website. He holds a BS in physiology from UCLA.

Are Carbohydrates Essential?Despite oft-heard claims to the contrary, there is no actual physiological requirement for dietary carbohydrate. Even the RDA handbook acknowledges this, right before recommending that a prudent diet should contain a lot of carbohydrates.To understand why carbs aren’t essential, I need to discuss the concept of an essential nutrient briefly. And, in brief, an essential nutrient is defined as:Any nutrient that is required for survival.Can’t be made by the body.Quoting from my own Rapid Fat Loss Handbook:The second criterion is the reason that dietary carbohydrate is not an essential nutrient: the body is able to make as much glucose as the brain and the few other tissues need on a day-to-day basis from other sources. I should mention that the body is not able to provide sufficient carbohydrate to fuel high intensity exercise such as sprinting or weight training and carbs might be considered essential for individuals who want to do that type of exercise. I’ll come back to exercise later in this article.But from the standpoint of survival, the minimum amount of carbohydrates that are required in a diet is zero grams per day. The body can make what little it needs from other sources. What, you ask, are those other sources? Read on.

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Back on the subject of food consumption. The pancreas is assigned the task of insulin production and regulating sugar levels in the blood stream..

Diabetes has serious consequences for modern man, and yet the prevailing view holds that glucose is the primary fuel source. How can that be? This is not true.
Check out these videos on youtube that re-affirm that view about diabetes.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy4F-140upIhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLiTbb6MaEU
Both videos regurgitate the same view that diabetes is caused by lack of insulin or the body inability to uptake blood sugar, also known as insulin resistance.

Both videos promulgate the same mis-concepts that sugar is the primary fuel for the body. Wrong. The body can use glucose (blood sugar) as a fuel, but it is not the primary fuel, it is secondary.
The body's primary fuel source is fat. It always has been. Correction. It has been for 4 million years since our ancestors climbed down from their arboreal habitat and started scavenging the savannah for food scraps. Our ancestors dietary habits changed from eating fruit and leaves, when they lived among the trees, to eating flesh and fat when then roamed the plains of Africa.
Not only did their diet change, it also produced a change in their alimentary system. Our guts are shorter than a (gorilla/chimpanzee) but slightly longer than a dog (carnivore).
Why did our gut system shrink?
Cos our ancestors started eating meat, fat and offal.
Our ancestors had little access to sugars/carbs. There were no apple groves, orange groves, peaches, or many of the other sugar rich fruits we consume today. Most of the fruits you buy in the supermarket were the result of extensive farming, and horticulture. Our ancestors did not have the benefits of Luther Burbank. So they could not enjoy all those fresh sugary fruits you can but at the supermarket and at the local store.

As our ancestors did not have access to high levels of carbs or sugar, our bodies have not had enough time to adapt to the dietary changes we impose on them. It will probably take at least 100,000 years for the adaptations to occur. We have only been using grains (high carbs) for 10,000 years. We have only been eating fruits (in large amounts for a few hundred years). We have only been consuming sugar for a few hundred years. Our bodies have not had enough evolutionary time for adaptation to occur.

If diabetes is a sugar disease. What is the cure? Can the answer really be this easy? I cannot believe doctors have not already stumbled on this obvious solution. Yeah. Reduce or eliminate sugar from an individuals diet.